Check Links Skill

Finds broken [[wiki-links]] across your vault by extracting link targets and verifying that each target file exists. Read-only — never modifies files.

Usage

/check-links

Or ask:

• "Check for broken links in my vault"

• "Find dead wiki-links"

• "Are there any broken links?"

How to Execute

Step 1: Extract all wiki-links

Use Grep to find all [[...]] patterns in markdown files:

Grep: pattern: "\[\[([^\]|]+)" glob: "*.md" output_mode: content -n: true

This captures the link target (before any | alias). Exclude .claude/ and .obsidian/ directories from results.

Step 2: Build unique target list

From the grep results, extract the unique link targets. For each match like [[My Note]] or [[My Note|display text]] , the target is My Note .

Strip:

• Heading anchors: [[Note#heading]] → target is Note

• Block references: [[Note^block-id]] → target is Note

• Aliases: [[Note|alias]] → target is Note

Step 3: Verify each target exists

For each unique target, use Glob to check if a matching file exists:

Glob: pattern: "**/<target>.md"

A link is broken if no file matches. A link is valid if at least one file matches.

Step 4: Report results

Group broken links by source file:

Broken Links Report

Daily Notes/2024-01-15.md

• [[Projet Alpha]] — no matching file found
• [[Old Goal]] — no matching file found

Projects/Project Beta.md

• [[Meeting Notes Jan]] — no matching file found

Summary: 3 broken links across 2 files (out of 45 total links checked)

Step 5: Suggest fixes

For each broken link, try to find a close match:

• Use Glob with a partial pattern: **/<partial-target>.md

• If a similar filename exists, suggest it:

• [[Projet Alpha]] — Did you mean [[Project Alpha]]?

• If no close match, just report "no matching file found"

Edge Cases

• Embedded images (![[image.png]] ) — skip these, they reference attachments

• External links (text ) — skip these, they are not wiki-links

• Template placeholders ([[{{date}}]] ) — skip anything with {{ in the target

• Empty links ([[]] ) — report as malformed, not broken

No Broken Links

If all links are valid:

✅ All wiki-links verified — no broken links found across X files (Y links checked)

Tips

• Run /check-links periodically to catch link rot

• After renaming files, run this to find links that need updating

• Combine with /search to find notes that reference deleted content